Tesla Model Y Plummets From No.1 To 18 In Euro Sales Chart

Well, it was fun while it lasted. Tesla’s Model Y made history in 2023 when it became the first EV to top the European sales table, but the picture looks very different only a few months later. New figures show the Model Y dropped from first place in the table in May 2023 to 18th last month.

Model Y sales fell by 49 percent to 10,582 according to Dataforce. Buyers across the continent have been cooling on the idea of buying EVs, and the removal of state subsidies in addition to a dockworker’s strike in Sweden affecting Tesla deliveries hasn’t helped.

Related: Tesla Model Y Was World’s Best-Selling Car In 2023 With 1.22 Million Units

But Tesla’s misfortune is cause for celebration at VW, who had two cars duking it out for the top spot in May. The firm’s T-Roc crossover has been around since 2017 and is about to be facelifted, but it still managed to record a 12 percent sales increase in May versus the same month in 2023. That puts it provisionally in first place ahead of the third-placed Dacia Sandero, which was narrowly beaten by the Model Y last year and is still ahead overall this year, having topped the chart for five months.

Relegating the Sandero to third place this May, however, is the freshly facelifted VW Golf. Wolfsburg’s hatch was Europe’s best-selling car for decades, but seemed to struggle in recent years as buyer turned towards more fashionable crossovers and SUVs. But the latest model, which doesn’t look much different on the outside but has a much-improved interior that fixes some of the terrible switchgear brought in for the Mk8 in 2019, has launched a sales comeback, its deliveries climbing by 28 percent.

The data still has to be ratified and Auto News thinks the Golf could actually overtake the T-Roc to regain first place when the results from every market are counted. The provisional figures put the T-Roc on 19,748 sales, the Golf on 19,333 and the Sandero down 10 percent at 18,676.